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When ‘Glass Ceiling’ Is a Positive

VIEW The Vista Roof on the 2012 Lincoln MKX. The roof is also available on the Ford Edge and Explorer.

THE craze for panoramas swept America in the 1840s, inspiring both P. T. Barnum and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Panoramas of the era were giant realistic paintings of exotic landscapes, unscrolled on rollers to the accompaniment of piano music. They astonished audiences, much as IMAX films did some 150 years later.

Americans have repeatedly indulged in big views ever since: picture windows in the ranch house, CinemaScope at the drive-in, wide screen television in the media room.

A similar passion for the wider view may be taking shape in automobiles. Huge double sunroofs are growing more popular. They offer a view of the sky that attracts about as many car buyers as those who get navigation units, at a cost roughly equivalent to the $1,500 that is the car salesman’s rule of thumb for leather seats.

Ford says orders for its expansive Vista Roof option are double what had been projected; in two crossover models, the Edge and Explorer, half of the buyers spent the extra money for it. The option is also available on the Lincoln MKX.

Gerry McGovern, head of design at Land Rover, said panoramic roofs made a vehicle’s interior seem larger, opening it to the outside world.

“They bring in the urban ambiance,” Mr. McGovern said. (He has given the new Land Rover Evoque a very large sunroof.) The notion is not a new one: publicity for the De Soto Skyview taxicabs of the 1940s and ’50s promoted their open roofs as an attraction to city visitors.

New types of glass have helped make the trend possible. Today’s glass is treated to filter out ultraviolet and reduce heat load, lowering the demand on air-conditioning systems.

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FOR HEAVENS' SAKE The Kia Optima has two glass panels, one of which slides over the other.

Ceiling glass can also make tightly packed interiors seem more attractive, designers say — a benefit to companies trying to meet new fuel economy standards by selling smaller cars.

Passenger vehicles must meet federal safety standards, no matter what type of roof. Panoramic roofs have also fared well in independent tests.

“We have tested a couple of vehicles with panoramic-style sunroofs,” Russ Rader, vice president for communications of the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety, said in an e-mail. “There is no indication that these roof designs aren’t as strong as roofs without them.”

He added: “However, this doesn’t mean that vehicles with glass roof panels would be as safe in rollovers as vehicles without them.” Glass roofs could break or pop out.

Sunroofs are being sold with the sort of breathless marketing language once reserved for a new engine or transmission. The trade names applied to the panoramic roof systems promise the heavens: Command View, UltraView and perhaps the best, Magic Sky, from Mercedes-Benz. These names awaken memories of the Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser station wagons of the 1960s and 1970s, with their angled roof windows inspired by Vista-Dome railroad cars.

The roofs are getting bigger. The latest version of Cadillac’s UltraView sunroof, available on the SRX crossover and CTS models, has grown on the new model: the SRX’s sunroof covers 70 percent of the roof area and has a power retractable shade. Volkswagen says that the glass roof of the 2012 Beetle is 80 percent larger than its predecessor’s and that it blocks 99 percent of the ultraviolet radiation and 92 percent of the heat energy.

The Volkswagen EOS even offers a sunroof within its folding hard top. “It is an upscale feature,” said Rainer Michel, vice president for product marketing and strategy at Volkswagen of America.

“You don’t have to give up the outside entirely when the top is up,” he said. The large sunroof appears to link with the windshield, turning the whole roof into a sheet of glass, Mr. Michel said.

Acura says that the panoramic window of its slope-backed ZDX crossover is the largest in the industry. But the most dramatic and extreme treatment may be that of the Jaguar XJ sedan, whose glass sweeps from the windshield to the rear deck and is the key to the car’s visual identity.

Jaguar explains that the XJ roof, unlike a conventional sunroof, has a front section that opens upward and outward to prevent any loss of headroom. There are twin electric blinds for privacy.

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SWEEPING The panoramic window in the 2012 Acura ZDX.

The roofs of some cars with panoramic glass — the Kia Optima is an example — are painted in dark reflective colors or covered with materials designers call foils to give the impression of a roof made entirely of glass. The appeal may be more fashion than function, as with the vogue of the 1950s, when some models had their entire upper bodies painted white to simulate convertibles.

The Magic Sky glass roof on the folding hardtop of the 2012 Mercedes-Benz SLK roadster changes from dark to clear at the touch of a button. Voltage passing through particles in the glass causes them to realign, lightening or darkening the roof. (A panorama roof with permanently dark-tinted glass is also available.)

According to Mercedes, the technology is based on the physics of a plate condenser: when voltage is applied to the glass, the embedded particles position themselves to let light to pass through the glass. If the voltage remains switched off, the particles position themselves randomly, blocking the light, and the glass remains dark. The price of this option is $2,500.

Light from above signals luxury. The romantic appeal of the panoramic roof may be suggested by a BMW television advertisement that shows the driver refilling his coffee mug from a low-flying military tanker aircraft. A recent Volvo spot showed happy vehicles with their roofs open at night, light shining upward.

Lincoln counts the panoramic roof as a luxury feature and promises that future models will be distinguished from garden-variety Fords by large sliding-glass roof panels. But Ford, too, is emphasizing glass in future models.

The Evos, a design study introduced at the Frankfurt auto show last month that serves as a summary of the Ford brand’s future design language, offers a band of glass in the roof.

“It runs from windshield to backlight, but we put in a couple of chicanes,” Ford’s vice president for design, J Mays, said.

Not all panoramic roofs have to be glass or high-tech. The Fiat 500 offers an optional folding canvas roof, evocative of the 1950s. The Jeep Liberty also offers a canvas roof, the Sky Slider.

Perhaps only one step remains in the evolution of the panoramic roof: no glass at all.

The Pantheon in Rome, considered one of the greatest buildings in the world, offers a sunroof: a 30-foot hole in the dome. It brings in light and not much more than an occasional sprinkle of rain onto the backs of pigeons beneath.

It also has a cool Latin name, ideal for marketing: oculus.

A version of this article appears in print on October 2, 2011, on Page AU2 of the New York edition with the headline: When ‘Glass Ceiling’ Is a Positive. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe